Mr. DeSantis has visited Marrakesh, Morocco—”it's this weird desert oasis with so much Parisian charm”—where he bought rugs to decorate his Streeterville condo. He's bought silver in Cairo, a city he describes as so smoggy and crowded that he was grateful to retreat to the sanctuary of a luxury hotel, Four Seasons Cairo at the First Residence.

Dubai, Mr. DeSantis says, is “like Las Vegas—a totally manufactured city,” with hotel-hopping the main source of entertainment, along with camel races and dune buggy rides. By contrast, Jordan “was very beautiful in a natural way,” he says, and the people were warm and helpful. In Jordan, “I felt that vacation really started.”

Deserts, which cover about one-fifth of the earth's surface and exist on every continent, share one defining characteristic: They get less than 10 inches of precipitation a year. The dryness and, often, heat (though not all deserts are always hot) foster a landscape that is seemingly featureless but eventually reveals itself as gloriously detailed, with flowering plants, curious creatures, undulating colors and intricate textures of sand.

They include some of the world's most iconic cultural and religious sites, across the Middle East, and legendary sun-and-sand destinations such as Palm Springs, Calif.

“People go out there looking to experience the raw, untouched landscape,” says a spokeswoman for Abercrombie & Kent USA LLC, a Downers Grove-based travel company. “They want to go back in time.”

Countries such as Morocco and Egypt, she adds, let travelers fit two vacations in one: a few nights in a modern city, then a night or two in the desert, “miles from any other traveler.”

Steve Provenzano is in good shape, but the desert conditions took their toll while vacationing in Jordan and Egypt with a church group last year. “I crashed every night. It's tiring because the air is so dry,” says Mr. Provenzano, 51, president of Executive Career Services Inc., a résumé-writing firm in Streamwood.

High points of his trip included Petra, the ancient city built into the cliffs of Jordan. “It was the thrill of the unknown,” he says, describing the downhill walk into Petra. “It's like you're walking 1,000 years into the past.” The architectural marvel of the place—it was built with human hands, not machinery—was also thrilling.

The hot walk back uphill? Not so much, says Mr. Provenzano, who took his time and admired cave drawings on the way back to modern civilization.

In Egypt, he visited St. Catherine's Monastery, at the foot of Mount Sinai. A shrub on the grounds is said to be the “burning bush” of the biblical story: “To know it's been there that long and is still growing is mind-blowing,” Mr. Provenzano says.

For Jill Paider, a Chicago-based art photographer, otherworldly natural monuments, not human-made ones, drew her to an epic desert landscape in Africa this fall. She and a friend flew to South Africa, then Namibia, before driving 600 miles to Sossusvlei in the Namib Desert, site of some of the highest, oldest sand dunes in the world.

They visited Etosha National Park, a wild-game preserve in Namibia; drove the Skeleton Coast along the Atlantic, all sand and shipwrecks; and then hit the dunes.

The two stayed in tents, but not the Boy Scout kind: In Etosha, they stayed at Epacha Game Lodge & Spa, a group of luxury chalets overlooking a game preserve. At the dunes, they stayed at another luxury tent lodge, Little Kulala, where tents are luxurious but minimalist.

“You're interacting with the landscape a lot more, living the nomadic life, to some extent,” says Ms. Paider, 33.

She lived in Arizona briefly and also has visited Dubai, Oman and Morocco. Desolate landscapes appeal to her artistic eye, and to her spirit. “It's the vastness, the abundance of the landscape,” she says. “It's very peaceful, and you're one with nature, whether you like it or not.”

The desert climate of Australia's Northern Territory is home to Uluru (also called Ayers Rock), a 1,142-foot sandstone mass that is as iconic as Sydney Opera House and the Great Barrier Reef.

The rock, a sacred place for aboriginal people, sits on the edge of the desert. It's accessible by plane from Sydney and Melbourne or via car in a five-hour drive from Alice Springs. Another option is the Ghan train, which runs from Adelaide to Alice Springs.

STARGAZING IN AUSTRALIA

Deborah Trevino compares Uluru to the Grand Canyon: “The color changes as the day goes on,” says Ms. Trevino, an agent at Hobson Travel Ltd. in Naperville and a desert aficionado. She has climbed Uluru with the help of a chain bolted into the rock's surface. “Coming down is the tricky part,” she says, as technical climbing, with equipment, is discouraged because of Uluru's spiritual significance.

Ms. Trevino suggests staying at the luxury Longitude 131 hotel, an eco-friendly lodge. As do some others, the hotel offers a Sounds of Silence dinner at the base of the rock; dinner includes Champagne, recital by a didgeridoo player, storytelling by aboriginal people and, when night falls, an astronomer to point out stellar phenomena, such as the Southern Cross constellation, viewable only in the Southern Hemisphere.

“The stars are just amazing,” says Ms. Trevino, 56, as is the silence: “When it's quiet, it's so quiet.”

There's no need to cross an ocean to see a desert, of course, as there are plenty of hot, arid vacation spots in the Americas.

Palm Springs is a longtime gathering place for wealthy, heat-seeking Chicagoans.

Commodities trader Chuck Reeder has vacationed there since 1977; he and his wife, Barbara, own a second home in Rancho Mirage.

“I love the weather, I love the mountains—you are completely surrounded by mountains,” says Mr. Reeder, 63, who lives in Glencoe. The social scene for snowbird Chicagoans—plus casinos, hiking, celebrity-studded film and music festivals, and dozens of golf courses—are all reasons he looks forward to Palm Springs vacations.

“When I walk off the plane, I feel the weight's off my shoulders,” he says.

SUNNY RENEWAL

Karen Nelson vacationed in Scottsdale, Ariz., two years ago; she expected to like the city but not the desert itself. Trips to the national parks surrounding the area changed her mind.

Ms. Nelson, 58, owner of an in-home day-care center in Elk Grove Village, hiked in the Saguaro National Forest and toured the cliff dwellings in Sedona, including Montezuma Castle National Monument, a 1,000-year-old, 20-story apartment building, and Montezuma Well, an ancient oasis nearby.

“I fell in love with the whole area,” she says. “I want to go back and do everything again.”

For Rita Winters, Arizona's Sonoran desert was just what her inner career coach ordered: The heat, relentless sun, towering saguaro cactus and smelly, noisy desert pigs called javelina made a perfect backdrop for Ms. Winters, a former advertising executive, to re-evaluate her life.

The otherworldliness of it all “makes you rediscover things,” says Ms. Winters, now director of marketing at Admiral on the Lake, a non-profit retirement home in Chicago. “There is plant life, but it doesn't look alive. When you get up close, you realize these half-dead things bloom.”

During her first trip, in 1997, Ms. Winters stayed at the Desert House of Prayer. She chose the no-frills hotel, a religious retreat, expressly to decompress, and wrote a book, “The Green Desert,” about her experience.

“Everything is very Spartan,” Ms. Winters says. “You do your own cleaning.”

Two years ago, on a different kind of vacation, she stayed at Miraval, a luxury spa in Tucson.

“They dropped oil on my head, and I ate lobster,” Ms. Winters says. “It was wonderful in its own way, but it wasn't a life-changing experience.”